Astronomers discover 128 new moons orbiting Saturn
Astronomers have discovered 128 new moons orbiting Saturn, giving it an insurmountable lead in the running tally of moons in the solar system.
Until recently, the “moon king” title was held by Jupiter, but Saturn now has a total of 274 moons, almost twice as many as all the other planets combined. The team behind the discoveries had previously identified 62 Saturnian moons using the Canada France Hawaii telescope and, having seen faint hints that there were more out there, made further observations in 2023.
“Sure enough, we found 128 new moons,” said the lead researcher, Dr Edward Ashton, a postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Academia Sincia in Taiwan. “Based on our projections, I don’t think Jupiter will ever catch up.” […]
The moons were identified using the “shift and stack” technique, in which astronomers acquire sequential images that trace the moon’s path across the sky and combine them to make the moon bright enough to detect. All of the 128 new moons are “irregular moons”, potato-shaped objects that are just a few kilometres across. The escalating number of these objects highlights potential future disagreements over what actually counts as a moon.
“I don’t think there’s a proper definition for what is classed as a moon. There should be,” said Ashton. However, he added that the team may have reached a limit for moon detection – for now.
“With current technology, I don’t think we can do much better than what has already been done for moons around Saturn, Uranus and Neptune,” said Ashton.
The thing that kind of puzzles me here is that, frankly, Cassini was in Saturn’s close vicinity for thirteen years and never spotted any of these new moons. It did find some, but only seven, not over a hundred. Weird how a probe actually orbiting the planet these moons are also orbiting never noticed them, but we’re able to detect them from here on Earth. Jupiter has 95 moons, by the way; I’ve always been amused by the scene in “Revenge of the Cybermen” where the Doctor expresses surprise at Jupiter having acquired a thirteenth moon, cos that line was dated before the show was even broadcast (an actual 13th moon was spotted in September 1974 just before filming even started for it), and it’s only got more so as decades have gone by…
